By Chloe Angyal • 13 years ago

The Feministing Rom Com Review: How Do You Know

How Do You Know is about Lisa (Reese Witherspoon), a 31-year-old professional softball player who’s been cut from the US national team and is struggling to figure who she is if she’s not an athlete any more. Making the process more complicated are her relationships with two men – one a friend and fellow athlete Matty (Owen Wilson), and the other a probably-indicted businessman, the somewhat nebbish George (Paul Rudd). To its credit, How Do You Know, which was written and directed by the legendary James L. Brooks is not formulaic. It gives us complicated characters who speak in realistic ways and who don’t behave according to predictable Hollywood story arcs. It’s just a shame that in eschewing formula, it ...

How Do You Know is about Lisa (Reese Witherspoon), a 31-year-old professional softball player who’s been cut from the US national team and is struggling to figure who she is if she’s not an athlete any more. ...
By goddessjaz • 13 years ago

Net Neutrality Passes, Obstacles Remain

Net neutrality has been a major issue of debate over the last few years and today the FCC has passed some unclear rules regulating Internet access. Advocates on both sides are disappointed with the results: some feel that these new regulations will not limit online discrimination and that large loopholes for corporations still exist, while those on the other side believe that the FCC doesn’t even have the power to make these decisions and is too tightly regulating communications.

Here’s an explanation of what was decided yesterday (courtesy of CNet):

The first rule requires both wireless and wireline providers to be transparent in how they manage and operate their networks.

The second Net neutrality rule prohibits the blocking of traffic ...

Net neutrality has been a major issue of debate over the last few years and today the FCC has passed some unclear rules regulating Internet access. Advocates on both sides are disappointed with the results:

By Vanessa • 13 years ago

What We Missed

Celebrity Props of the Day go to Halle Berry: She volunteers regularly at (and donates to) a domestic violence shelter in LA, and helps renovate old apartments for those who leave abusive relationships and are seeking shelter. Awesome. (Via)

Colombia just passed a new law that ensures free access to contraceptives. (Although I don’t envy their abortion law.)

How Bollywood is beginning to respond to India’s caste system.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour makes seemingly positive remarks about the Citizens Council movement, an anti-integration and pro-white supremacy group during the Civil Rights era.

Celebrity Props of the Day go to Halle Berry: She volunteers regularly at (and donates to) a domestic violence shelter in LA, and helps renovate old apartments for those who leave abusive relationships ...
By goddessjaz • 13 years ago

A Record Low for Teen Birth Rates

New research released today from the National Center for Health Statistics reports that the teen birth rate for 2009 hit a record low. According to the study, the birth rate among U.S. girls aged 15 to 19 fell to 39.1 births per 1,000 teens in 2009, a 6 percent drop from 2008 and the lowest rate ever recorded in the approximately 70 years that the federal government has been collecting this data.

Most of the experts who have spoken about this consider the economic recession to be the main culprit in the reduction of teen birth rates. Some advocates are a bit skeptical because teens are not usually working full-time or primary family breadwinners, so aren’t directly ...

New research released today from the National Center for Health Statistics reports that the teen birth rate for 2009 hit a record low. According to the study, the birth rate among U.S. girls aged 15 to ...
By Vanessa • 13 years ago

Memo to anti-choice terrorists: You’re not doing much to decrease abortion rate

While you think it’d be more effective to convince anti-choice extremists who commit acts of terror against abortion clinics that what they’re doing is inherently wrong (because they’re, you know, attempting murder and all), this may be something they’d ponder more closely: Research is showing that these “tactics” may actually be pretty ineffective in decreasing abortion rates.

The authors find that while in the short-run there is a small increase in local fertility (1%), in the longer run women simply travel to other areas in order to have abortions. If this is, in fact, the case, then the overall the effect on abortion rates is negligible, suggesting that this particular form of terrorism is largely ...

While you think it’d be more effective to convince anti-choice extremists who commit acts of terror against abortion clinics that what they’re doing is inherently wrong (because they’re, you know, attempting murder and all), this may be ...
By Vanessa • 13 years ago

President Obama orders new federal breastfeeding policy

Although breastfeeding private and public sector workers’ rights are included in the new health care reform law, President Obama has requested guidelines be implemented for federal employees:

President Obama is asking federal personnel officials to draft “appropriate workplace accommodations” for federal employees who are nursing mothers.

The president issued a memo Monday to the Office of Personnel Management, asking for new guidelines to be published when ready.

The order is required by the new health-care reform law, which mandates new breastfeeding rights primarily for hourly workers in the private and public sectors. But Obama asked the federal govenrment to go a step farther by establishing new guidelines for all federal employees, no matter their ...

Although breastfeeding private and public sector workers’ rights are included in the new health care reform law, President Obama has requested guidelines be implemented for federal employees:

President Obama is asking federal personnel officials to draft ...
By Maya Dusenbery • 13 years ago

Keith Olbermann responds to #MooreandMe Twitter protest in the worst possible way

If you’ve been on Twitter in the last week, it’s probably been hard to miss the Twitter protest against Michael Moore for dismissing and mischaracterizing the rape accusations against Julian Assange—first in a post announcing he was posting bail for Assange and then on Keith Olbermann’s show.

Launched by Sady Doyle and Jaclyn Friedman last Wednesday and waged under the hashtag #mooreandme, the campaign has called for Moore (and Olbermann) to correct the misinformation they spread, offer an apology for minimizing rape allegations and smearing the accusers, and preferably donate $20,000 to an anti-sexual assault organization.

Almost a week later, there’s still no response from Moore (although he has written a letter to the entire government ...

If you’ve been on Twitter in the last week, it’s probably been hard to miss the Twitter protest against Michael Moore for dismissing and mischaracterizing the rape accusations against Julian Assange—first in a post announcing ...

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